No, I Don’t Want To Read Your Book

I’ve noticed something rather troubling in my years of gainful underemployment. It’s when your manager/supervisor/owner asks you to read a specific book. A book they think is critical to your improvement and corporate betterment. A book that has a name like-The Key to Winning in Business, or some other nonsense title you’d rather not read on your own time….or well…ever.

“Who Moved My Cheese was a seminal book in the genre of how to be a bigger dick at work and get what you want.”

My first experience with company sponsored book reading was when I received one of my few promotions. I was working for AT&T, and was promoted as a corporate business manager. When I got the job, the manager who hired me also received a promotion. On her last day, which coincided with my first day, she gathered her team together into a conference room to say goodbye. Her goodbye “gift” was a book called Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson.

Who Moved My Cheese was a seminal book in the genre of how to be a bigger dick at work and get what you want. She kept referring to the book as a life changer. She was clearly enamored with it and insisted Who Moved My Cheese would change our lives. As she spoke, her eyes had that dreamy dewy look you see in someone who believes angels live among us, and is spreading the good news of their arrival. There may have also been a bluebird on her shoulder. I can’t quite recall.

I gave the book a chance, but it didn’t resonate for me. I thought it was, ummm…what’s the word….. stupid. Yes, that is the word. It’s a book about coping with change, and spoon feeds advice that may be great for a five year old having a hard time moving on from nursery school to kindergarten, but not so terrific for working adults who face more complex realities. But what do I know? It has sold millions. Anyway, I moved Who Moved My Cheese into my office trash can where I had earlier moved my cheese puff crumbs. Synergy!

My next experience with forced book reading happened when I briefly worked for a collections agency. A wonderful little company that preyed on people late on their student loans. I worked at this job for exactly one month. 30 days too many. During that stellar month, the manager, Brad, thought it was important for the collections agents to hate our jobs more than even we thought was possible. He did that by picking a book a month he required the employees to read.

To be fair, I can’t remember the book Brad chose for the month I was there. I was to busy getting black out drunk every night. That was so I could get through the sheer misery of working at a collections agency. On a scale of one to fuck you Brad, being asked to read a book by a guy who wanted you to hassle people who were late on student loan debts was definitely a “fuck you Brad.”

My most recent experience with employee book bullying was at my last job. I worked for a small travel company who “honored” the free trips time share presenters give to people who consent to listen to their bullshit. I put honored in quotes, because my job was actually creatively denying people their trips. I’ll write more about that particular job in a blog post I’ll probably title “I was a Professional Liar.”

This was a small company. Maybe 30 employees in total, and the owner was a trolly looking pig, and a lecherous prick. A real lovely guy who hit on every female staffer within spitting distance. He was also an incredibly cheap bastard. He paid a steady $11.00 dollars an hour to most employees, with no merit raises. Ever. Eleven dollars to start and to end. Of course, he drove a brand new Mercedes, but a raise was out of the question because, ya know, the business was going through hard times.

The reason most people stayed there was purely for the medical benefits, which were pretty good. Also, the schedule was 8-5 Monday through Friday, which is harder and harder to find in a terrible job. Yet this one had it.

So, Mr. Trollpig saw fit to give every single employee, Dale Carnegie’s magnificently dated and terrible advice book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Each employee was given an eight disc audiobook, and was required to give a book report a week on each disc. To top it off, this was to be done on our own time sans pay.

My immediate reaction was “fuck you asshole,” which I thought was reasonable. I went to the one person HR department, and nicely tried rejecting this pro bono work I was being asked to perform. I told her I didn’t have time to listen to the audio book and write a summary. Also, I was going to night school, and had no time to realistically complete the assignments.

I plead my case, and ultimately she issued her measured response. “Just get it fucking done.” I may be mistaking the quote a bit, but that was the gist of it. Faced with either quitting, being fired or doing this inherently unfair book project, I settled on undermining it as much as I could.

I put the discs in the computer at work and listened to a few minutes of each one. I would get an idea what the subject was and then write completely made up reactions to the discs. All done on company time. Now, I don’t feel like I beat the system. It was just the best I could do under the circumstances and still retain a shred of respect for myself.

I will say, I had to admire the owner’s attempt at wiping all dignity from his employees with this degrading assignment. As a social experiment it showed the bar had been lowered for how badly an employer could treat their employees. Hooray for progress.

I think the hidden message from managers/supervisors/owners who give an employee a book to read is, ”We both know your life sucks since you work here, and this book can show you the path to a better life. You’re welcome.” It’s a move I call “pouring salt in an open wound.” Also, importantly, you would never see these roles reversed. Seriously, can you imagine going to your manager and saying, “Hey Bill, you really need to read this book. It’s called How To Not Be A Terrible Fucking Manager.” Go ahead. Read it. Here it is. It’s on me. I think you’ll like it.”